Auto glass plant going to Ohio, not Adrian

An auto glass manufacturing plant that economic developers had hoped to lure to the Marvin Farm property on West Beecher Street in Adrian will go to Ohio instead.

Fuyao Glass Industry Group Co. will occupy a former General Motors Corp. factory in Moraine, Ohio, near Dayton. The company is expected to invest $200 million in the plant and employ 800 people within three years, according to an Associated Press report.

In August, former Adrian Mayor Greg DuMars said Adrian was one of three cities in Michigan still in the running for the plant, which remained unnamed at the time.Even if the company had come to Adrian, not all of the jobs would have been local, according to two people knowledgeable about the proposal.

Lenawee Now Executive Director Jim Van Doren said Monday it was his understanding that about 200 of the jobs at the plant would have been filled by Chinese nationals.

Adrian Acting City Administrator Shane Horn also said Tuesday that about 200 of the jobs had been expected to go to Chinese nationals. The company planned to build a $20 million dormitory on the Marvin Farm site to house the workers, Horn said.

“It wasn’t going to be genuinely 800 Lenawee County jobs,” Horn said.

Despite that, the city considered the project worth pursuing, he said.

Some of the Chinese workers were expected to “cycle back” to China or “rotate out,” but it was not clear long-term how many of those jobs would be local jobs, Horn said.

Horn said he was proud of the plan the city put together to attract the plant, including real and personal property tax reductions and waiving other fees.

“From the local level, I think we did everything we could do,” Horn said.

The Michigan Economic Development Corp. also was involved in trying to bring the plant to Michigan. Asked about the number of jobs that might have been held by Chinese nationals, MEDC spokesperson Kathleen Fagan responded in an email Tuesday that “we do not comment on projects that may or may not have been under consideration in Michigan.”

The city will continue to market the Marvin Farm property, and might need to focus more on local companies, Horn said.

“Presently there’s not anything knocking on the door for that particular area,” he said.Van Doren said the availability of many empty automobile and other factories throughout the country is one problem local economic developers face in marketing a property such as Marvin Farm, where any developer would have to construct a building.

In February 2013 it was announced that Cosma Castings Michigan, a subsidiary of auto supplier Magna International Inc., had bought a vacant plant in Battle Creek where it expected to create 572 jobs. The Marvin Farm property also had been in the running for that plant, Van Doren said.

Adrian Mayor Jim Berryman said Monday that it is “always disappointing” when potential economic development doesn’t happen locally.

Berryman said manufacturing would continue to be a “key component” of the city’s economic development but that Adrian should focus on working with the city’s three colleges, which have been expanding their facilities, student population and employment, and on encouraging small entrepreneurship.